Page:Sir Walter Raleigh by Thoreau, Henry David,.djvu/33

 Brown funeral were amended from the Sylvester copy. Hannah has a theory worth citing: "We find grounds for supposing that Ralegh marked each crisis of his history by writing some short poem, in which the vanity of life is proclaimed, under an aspect suited to his circumstances and age. His first slight check occurred in 1589, when he went to visit Spenser in Ireland; and more seriously a little later, when his secret marriage sent him to the Tower. The Lie, with its proud, indignant brevity, would then exactly express his angry temper. The Pilgrimage belongs more naturally to a time when he was smarting under the rudeness of the king's attorney at his trial in 1603. The few lines, Even such is Time, mark the calm reality of the now certain doom; they express the thoughts appropriate for the night now known to be indeed the last, when no room remained for bitterness or anger, in the contemplation of immediate and inevitable death."

I may observe that Thoreau adds a little to the tale of the occasion of these lines in the scrap-book where he copies them.